The Hindu : National : No plan to replace Arjun Munda

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Friday, Nov 26, 2004

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National

No plan to replace Arjun Munda

By Neena Vyas

RANCHI, NOV. 25. The Bharatiya Janata Party has no plans to change the Jharkhand Chief Minister, Arjun Munda, before the Assembly elections in about three months. At the same time it was officially made very clear that he will not be projected as chief minister in the event of the party winning the elections.

There have been rumours that Mr. Munda is to be replaced by the first Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Babulal Marandi, who was replaced after an agitation on the domicile issue. However, party leaders are aware that Mr. Marandi, by far, remains the more popular leader in the State. At the party's public rally here yesterday the louder applause was for him than for Mr. Munda.

``Collective leadership''

The general secretary in-charge of Jharkhand, Rajnath Singh, today made it clear that the party would project a ``collective leadership'' during the coming polls as it did in Chhattisgarh last year. ``The newly-elected party MLAs will then choose their leader.''

Naturally, the party does not want to make it public that Mr. Munda is no longer its favourite for the job, but some party leaders are privately making it known that the BJP will would be better off going to polls under Mr. Marandi rather than Mr. Munda whose Government has earned a bad name as far as corruption and ``transfers and postings'' are concerned. ``No district magistrate has remained in one district for more than 10 months. Transfer and postings have become an industry here,'' a senior journalist said. In fact, these issues have been dealt with at length in some local papers over the last few months.

Apparently, the party leadership does not want to change the Chief Minister now as it will appear to be a public acknowledgement that the Munda Government has failed to deliver. Similar experiments of changing chief ministers just before elections have failed miserably.

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